The
danger of a fascist or national socialist takeover in Russia was a topic
of frequent discussions in Russian media in the 1990s and it is an undisputable
fact that there were numerous rightist movements that could be classified
as fascist or national socialist. Many of them had their own storm troopers,
i.e. paramilitary formations of armed young men dressed in uniform or camouflage.
The requisites of these men often included swastikas of different shapes.

Many of these
rightist movements and organisations established contacts with their ideological
allies in the West. This could be seen from numerous rightist and anti-Semitic
publications that were sold or distributed in Moscow, St Petersburg and
other Russian cities. Furthermore, through these media, information about
Western rightist ideologies and movements was, and still is, channelled
to Russian readers - in most cases the national patriots or their supporters.
In a word, they began to `Westernise'.

The extremist
national patriots are too divided to constitute a real threat to the existing
order. Side by side with the aforementioned `Westernised' national patriots
there are their `traditionalist' colleagues yearning for the prerevolutionary
past of Russia. The strength of all extremists lies in their ability to
influence others' political argumentation, in particular that of the moderate
and pragmatic nationalists who form the overwhelming majority among Russians
opposing Western-style liberal reforms. Furthermore, even in the ongoing
general political and ideological discussions and debates in Russian media
the influence of rightist nationalism is palpable.

With some reservations,
under Boris Yeltsin's rule even the democrats in power as well as Gennadii
Zyuganov's communists in opposition became affected by the ideas of Russian
conservative nationalism. This being the case, all the main political forces
were more or less gravitating towards rightist attitudes and ideas. The
Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) is ideologically heterogeneous
but so far dominated by its nationalist wing spearheaded by the party leader
Gennadii Zyuganov.

On the whole,
a gradual shift towards attitudes coloured by Russian conservative nationalism
characterised Yeltsin's Russia. The Western-style liberal reforms had resulted
in great disappointments for `the man in the street'. There was a growing
need for finding alternatives to Russia's neoliberal Westernisation.

After the bankruptcy
of Marxism-Leninism and the fall of totalitarian socialism, leftist ideologies
- Zyuganov's `leftism' is verbal, not real - have not been very popular
in Russia. For the time being, instead of a strong and influential social
democratic party like those in Western and Central European countries,
there are several small, insignificant social democratic organisations
in Russia. One of them has Mikhail Gorbachev as its leader. A real labour
movement in the European sense has not yet materialised in Russia.

This being the
case, the idea of a conservative alternative to Yeltsin's liberal reforms
and pro-Western policy was gradually gaining momentum generally in the
broad layers of society. In the ongoing general political debate, in particular
in the mass media, there were more and more people suggesting that strong
state power, strict order and discipline be re­established in Russia.
Along with these attitudes, there was the time­honoured yearning for a
strong and efficient Russian leader. The new mood in society was gaining
momentum especially from August 1998 on, when the rouble collapsed.

What could be
the reasons behind this worldwide rightist trend? In our view, there are,
at least, the following ones, taking the 2003 poll in account that we mentioned
in the introduction one could ad:

First, the political
and ideological situation in the world totally changed after 1991. The
Western political and economic model has triumphed over totalitarian socialism.
Neoliberalism, or the doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism, has become
the dominant ideology not only in the West but also in most parts of the
rest of the world. Furthermore, globalisation is already replacing national
economies of states with an uncontrolled transnational economy.The radical
leftist alternative to neoliberalism is rather unpopular after the bankruptcy
of the Soviet experiment. Furthermore, globalisation has, in fact, diluted
European social democracy and made it gravitate towards the principles
of neoliberalism. Today, the only serious challenge to neoliberalism can
come from the right.

Second, neoliberal
globalisation seems, in fact, to pave the way for a populist right in the
rich part of the world. Unrestricted and uncontrolled laissez faire capitalism
resulting in polarisation of society invokes the principle of the survival
of the fittest, i.e. social Darwinism that happens to be one of the characteristics
of fascism as well as of national socialism.

In history,
the same free-market regime prevailed at the turn of the nineteenth century
until it was destroyed by World War I. The chaotic development of the 1920s
and 1930s led to economic hardships culminating in the Great Depression
with protectionism and political antiliberal nationalism as a consequence
in most European countries.

Today, Western
national states have lost their economic sovereignty. They are dependent
on the deregulated global economy with its unpredictable international
stock market and fierce capitalist competition. The danger of an economic
breakdown in some part of the world - we know what happened in 1998 in
Southeast Asia and Russia - is always possible.

The world race
to achieve maximum efficiency and minimum wages (a tendency among the biggest
manufacturers to shift production from the industrial countries can already
be seen) threatens now the well-being of the middle layers of the Western
society. With the massive job insecurity, and the growing unemployment
in several branches, a real fear for the future is spreading throughout
the Western world. Everywhere there is the same programme of reducing public
expenditure and eliminating social services. The welfare state seems to
be withering away. This creates a breeding ground of rightist populism,
the leftist alternative being much less attractive today. There is a drive
towards the past, when order, national traditions and some economic prosperity
seemed to co-exist, at least for the middle class.

Third, the rightist
tendencies in the West are fuelled by xenophobia and outright racism –
a consequence of the growing immigration that has been sweeping the Western
world in the late twentieth century and still continues to thrive. Immigrants
in general, and those representing other cultures and races in particular,
are mostly perceived as parasites by middle-class citizens who have lost
or are about to lose their previous economic status. In multinational Russia,
as we have seen, there are some parallels with this situation in the West.
We remember the typical cliché attitude, according to which non-Russian
nationalities have lived and prospered at the expense of the blue-eyed
Russians. On the other hand, it is true, this is not due to external immigration
as in the West. Yet, in Russia with a birth-rate that is lower than the
death-rate there is a demographic need for a growing immigration in the
years to come. For instance, already now there are people from former Soviet
Central Asiatic republics trying to find jobs in Russia where the wages
are much higher than in their own countries. This development will probably
continue and accelerate with the same consequences as in the West.

Fourth, deregulated
globalisation has created new international dangers. For instance, an international
borderless market has been accompanied by an international borderless terrorism.
As we have already seen in this study, in combating terrorism Russia as
well as the West have resorted to policies that are sometimes quite repressive.
This has been in line with general rightist attitudes favouring the creation
of a police state.

An Historical
Overview of Russia’s Geopolitical Thinking

Being an Orthodox
theocracy, Russia initially considered her growing size and strength
as serving a divine purpose. In Muscovite Russia of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, this idea appeared in the shape of the doctrine of Moscow as
the Third Rome (Moskva - Tretii Rim), a messianic doctrine that was based
on the legacy of the Byzantine Empire (the `Second Rome'). The latter had
proclaimed itself as the future universal Christian empire with a divinely
ordained mission to extend its Orthodox `truth' to the entire world. After
the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, this train of thought
was adopted by the Grand principality of Moscowy who had claimed title
to the spiritual heritage of the Byzantine Empire.

The Grand Princes
of Moscow proclaimed themselves as successors of the tsars of Byzantium
investing themselves with the title `Tsar, autocrat, chosen by God'. Orthodoxy,
the cornerstone of Russian nationalism later on in history, was often used
as an argument against the secularised and superficial West. It was to
represent pure and true Christianity in contrast to Catholicism, which
was seen as the heir to Roman paganism, and to Protestantism, which it
viewed as the gateway to barren individualism . Needless to say, this train
of thought implied that the rulers of Russia had the right to rule and
protect all the Orthodox people in the world and, by implication, to bring
them under Russian suzerainty. Moreover, as Orthodoxy was proclaimed the
only true Christian faith, the rulers considered themselves universal Christian
sovereigns, i.e. the rulers of all the 'Christians’. Thus, Russia's imperialistic
policy of geographical expansion during the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries could be theologically justified. Solzhenitsyn's
explanation is characteristic:

“In our view,
we could not leave Christian peoples without help wherever they lived on
the earth”.

By 1945, the
Soviet Union was like a carbon copy of Hitler's Germany in some important
respects: its system had become dictatorial, nationalist and anti-Semitic.
Disguised as Soviet patriotism Russian nationalism had manifested itself
in the form of large-scale deportations of ethnic groups like the Crimean
Tatars and Volga Germans, who were suspected in having collaborated with
Germany. During the war, the occupied territories had been a hotbed of
anti-Semitism. This ideological climate reached even the ranks of the partisans
and the Red Army . Russian traditional anti-Semitism was refueled by its
German modern equivalent.

After 1945 and,
especially, with the outbreak of the cold war in 1946, a far-reaching isolationism
took effect in the Soviet Union. The political atmosphere became outright
xenophobic, and the anti-Semitic feelings were to intensify. In 1948-53,
this policy continued as a campaign against `Zionists' and `rootless cosmopolitans'
. In plain language, the state and party hierarchy, the arts and the theatres,
the universities and colleges and the mass media should be cleansed from
Jews.

The poorly camouflaged
anti-Jewish campaign culminated in November 1948, when the Jewish anti-fascist
committee was disbanded and almost all its members arrested. A show trial
of Jewish doctors was held in March 1953. Stalin saw in the trial
a way to prepare the ground for exiling the Jewish population from the
centre of the Soviet Union and largely responsible for the growth of Israel
during the 1950’s followed by the decade of the Israeli “six day war”.

Before
the deportation the aforementioned Jewish doctors should be executed by
hanging. This anti-Jewish campaign could be interpreted as a Russian version
of Hitler's Final Solution. However that may be, Stalin's death put an
end to all these projects. In the Brezhnev era, the influence of national
socialist thinking was to revive, at least partly, along with national
bolshevism within the establishment when society became strongly militarised.
In the late 1970s, something like a `fascistisation of young functionaries'
of the party, Komsomol and state apparatus could be observed. Books about
the Third Reich gained popularity and it became `fashionable to praise
the firmness of the leaders of the Third Reich - Hitler, and Himmler and
Bormann even more.

The struggle
between Westernisers and conservative nationalists in contemporary Russia
is traced back to the problems of Western modernisation: Marxism and liberalism
being products of the Enlightenment are confronted with conservative traditionalism.
In this context, Russian thought is viewed as having been influenced also
by Western conservative thought, in particular by German philosophy including
its extreme manifestation, national socialism. On the other hand, among
the Russian political émigrés after 1917 there were several radical conservative
thinkers who, on their part, could give their German allies new impulses.
In Soviet Russia, Russian radical conservatism appeared in the shape of
national bolshevism.

Post-Soviet
Russia of the 1990s is divided and polarised as a consequence of unbridled
capitalism that many Russians call `robber capitalism'. The mood of the
society is becoming more and more conservative, the attitudes become coloured
by pessimism, social Darwinism, anticommunism, rejection of egalitarianism,
etc. There are suggestions to find a strong authoritarian leader à la
Augusto Pinochet as well as appeals to bring about a national reconciliation.

In the middle
of the 1990s, organisational forms of conservative nationalism still had
weak articulation. There were four different politically relevant parties
or movements: Zyuganov's communist (de facto national bolshevik) party
representing theoretically radical but actually moderate statism (imperialism),
Vladimir Zhirinovsky's liberal democratic party representing a more extreme
statism, Alexander Lebed's moderate and pragmatic party advocating a police
state of sorts, and national socialist Alexander Barkashov's paramilitary
movement, Russian National Unity (Russkoe National'noe Edinstvo, RNE),
advocating the creation of a monoethnic Russian state.

Serving as an
alternative to both Marxism and liberalism, conservatism has undergone
a metamorphosis under the influence of modernisation: the Christian world
outlook has gradually been replaced by more secular conceptions. This evolution
culminated in fascism and national socialism in parts of Europe. A similar
process has taken place in Russia: before 1917 Russia was a Caesaro-Papist
autocracy, the Soviet era could be labeled a de facto ideocratic autocracy,
whereas Yeltsin's Russia represented a secularised and, at the same time,
Westernised authoritarian rule.

In Yeltsin's
era, both traditionalist and `modern' versions of Russian nationalism coexisted,
but the latter was more and more getting the upper hand. The traditionalist
slogans in favour of a religious monarchy were replaced by visions of a
secularised authoritarian police state of sorts.

As regards the
statists or great power nationalists, religious messianism was replaced
by the view of Russia's geopolitical mission in a social Darwinist world.
Ethnic nationalism (racism), on the other hand, was more and more shifting
from confessional anti-Semitism to pseudo-scientific or occult theories
of the Jews as an inferior or evil race. Furthermore, even white power-mentality
and eugenics have become part of modern ethnic nationalism in contemporary
Russia.

Serving as an
ideological antidote to universalism and globalisation, geopolitics has
made a political comeback in the 1990s in Russia as well as in the West.
In Russia, this conservative worldview has mostly been interpreted in terms
of geographically antagonistic political cultures or civilisations.

Russian geopolitical
thinking with deep roots in history has always influenced the country's
foreign policy - under the Soviet regime it was disguised. Only after August
1991 was geopolitics officially accepted as a political doctrine. Neo-Eurasianism
became the most important and influential version of it. This anti-Western
theory had its roots in Eurasianism, a theory introduced by Russian émigrés
in the 1920s. It was based on two conceptions: the view of a declining
West and the conspiracy theory. The first-mentioned view has its precursors
even in the West - in Friedrich Nietzsche's and Oswald Spengler's writings
as well as in the national socialists' worldview.

The view of
the decrepit West, however, has always been combined with the so-called
conspiracy theory according to which the West is a hotbed of evil forces
conspiring against Russia. In plain language, all misfortunes and shortcomings
in Russia's history can be explained as having been caused by the West
dominated by Jews and Masons.

Today there
are mostly three different geopolitical strategies to save Russia.
Geopolitician Alexander Dugin (who translated occultists like Rene Guenon
and Julius Evola into Russian) views the task in restoring the empire and
expanding it through alliances with Germany, Japan and Iran.

Party leader
Zyuganov is more pragmatic: in his view, the privileged West ruled by a
cosmopolitan elite and trying to dominate the world is opposed by the rest
of the world. Russia should not integrate with the West but strive to attain
autarchy. In foreign policy, Russia could serve as a geopolitical equaliser
in a multipolar world of clashing civilisations.

And Zhirinovsky,
on the other hand, wants to reintegrate the dissolved empire through economic
and other sanctions against unwilling former Soviet republics, and to make
Russia a strong military great power. He suggests a final repartitioning
of the world into spheres of influence: North America dominating Latin
America, Europe dominating Africa, Russia dominating Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan,
etc. and China/Japan dominating Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Indonesia,
and Australia. Russia needs only to accomplish `the last push to the south'
through a Blitzkrieg and extend its borders to the Indian Ocean and the
Mediterranean. This thinking has manifested itself in much smaller military
operations such as the wars in Chechnya.

The Russian
ethnic nationalists reject the great power statists' dream of a restored
multinational empire and suggest instead the creation of a monoethnic Russian
state. This thinking is coloured by racism in general and anti-Semitism
in particular. European confessional anti-Semitism, in particular in Germany,
was secularised about a hundred years ago and replaced by racial biology.
The same development can be seen in contemporary Russia, even if religious
Judophobia still plays an important role in society. Being less articulated
than German national socialism the Russian extreme right is more obsessed
by the aforementioned conspiracy theory than by eugenics.

Different
theories on the Jews' role in Russia's history have been this past decade
been presented by 1) Igor Shafarevich who resorts to a codeword for the
Jews - `the small people'. They are viewed as having played a decisive
role in revolutions 1917 as well as in the terror that followed in the
1920s and 1930s.

2) Yurii Begunov
views the dissolution of the Soviet Union as well as the painful reforms
in Yeltsin's Russia as having been engineered by a Western international
elite - Masons and Jews - who want to transform Russia into a colony of
the West.

3)The Russian
national socialist party leader A. Barkashov, on the other hand, is depicted
as representing Hitlerite racial biology. He proclaims the need for creating
an armed resistance movement against the supposed Jewish dictatorship in
Russia.

Finally Putin's
rise to power was a logical consequence of two contradictory tendencies
in the country. On the one hand, there was the irreversible process of
political and economic modernisation and Westernisation of Russia including
its integration with the West. At the same time, this development had painful
social consequences: disorder, a deteriorating economy, polarisation of
society, and `criminal capitalism' in a corrupt state and society.

On the other
hand, there was a growing conservative pessimistic mood in society as a
consequence of the humiliating break-up of the Soviet empire as well as
of the fact of general disappointment with the reforms. These sentiments
were articulated in the emergence of nationalist and 'red-brown' parties
opposing Yeltsin and his government. The establishment was more and more
influenced by nationalist attitudes as were Zyuganov's communists, and
later on, in 1998-99, the liberals. On the other hand, modernisation influenced
many nationalists who adapted themselves to secular argumentation and pragmatic
thinking. Putin's rise to power is shown as mirroring the new drive towards
national unity in politically torn Russia. There is, at the moment, no
organised politically important opposition against the new President who
has somehow combined economic liberalism with statist nationalism, including
a police state authoritarianism of sorts.